Sunday, June 7, 2015

The Lonely Man

It was not his intention to go adventuring there. He had confidants and advisors beckoning him
to get out and socialize. The solitude
of his circumstances could only be cured by the company of people not yet
met. So reluctantly, he went.

The familiar streets were crowded with unfamiliar faces, all
looking past him as if he were invisible.
The passersby attentions all trained on their companions; there was no
room for the lowly stranger in their midst.

The town was alive with revelry; noise came from all
directions. The din was both unbearably
loud and totally indecipherable.
Laughter, shrieks, distant calls combined with the music of a dozen
venues and a thousand muttered conversations to become a mélange of nerve
challenging dissonance.

His deliberate smiles and tacit hellos met empty eyes and
averted glances; he ruminated that had he had ventured out completely nude, he
was certain that his presence would have gone just as unnoticed. He found no friends.

Transecting the calamity of tourists and locals, the need
for a strong drink entered his mind.
Loitering with the unwitting expectation that a rescue squad of forgotten
and neglected acquaintances from his previous life might somehow salvage the
night, the possibility of an empty discourse with a professional
conversationalist drove him to the nearest watering hole. The unseeing crowd gave no yield to his
incursion, and when by a series of widening detours, the lone man gained
proximity to the bar, there were no voids for which he could fill. Standing three back from his intended goal
and gesturing in direct line-of-sight, his discomfort grew as the mute bartender
proved as blind as the pedestrians on the street to his presence.

Backtracking through the inattentive throngs, he
found the sidewalk equally as stifling as the dram shop.Evasively wandering amid the swirling currents
of street musicians, young lovers, generational families and cliques of back-slapping
comrades enrapt in their secret mottled words and gestures, the lone man opened
every unlocked door only to find over and over again, the same disconcerting crowd,
each time wearing different faces.

Nary a single smile could he garner, and the scant few
moments of eye contact were colored with undertones of pity and
misunderstanding. He was alone not by
choice, but yes, he was alone.

At last the Heavens granted him some respite; the skies
opened above the quaint town and dowsed it with a cleansing rain. He now had unquestionable reason to slink
back to the comfort of his lonely hovel, justified with his earnest attempt to
appease the admonitions of those who bade him to go.

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About Me

I grew up in the farmlands of southern New Jersey. In my early adulthood, I explored and migrated to the over-populated, mono-climate peninsula of Florida, and stayed until I could take it no longer. After coming to my senses, I escaped rat-race and elbow-to-elbow crowds of urbanity to the Edenic rural sanctuary of Waynesville in western North Carolina at the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.